Despite the chaos I jumped down onto the floor below, my super speed would be enough to disguise me. My human heist would be over before anyone realized what was going on... I grabbed Ben, the man who had helped create me from the unsettled destruction. I had so many questions, ones that his death would have snuffed out forever. I climbed up walls, escaping through the hole in the ceiling. Ben gasped, but held on and trusted me anyway.
I had left my chip in my room, sooner or later the queen would come looking and wonder why I wasn't where my tracker said I would be. I had to return before that happened, but figured after the mayhem I'd caused I had some time to spare, even if it was brief.
I ran to the outskirts of Geminus, where the white clinical city become a never ending forest. The sickness that had threatened humankind had saved the beautiful world, plants and wildlife flourished out here, it was obvious to anyone who venture this far. I'd seen pictures in books in the underground, but nothing had prepared me for the actual visual beauty.
"You saved me." Ben exclaimed. He brushed loose dust off his suit and sat down on a rock. "Why?"
I smiled. "I have questions for you." I replied, sitting on a rock opposite him.
"I don't know why you were created. The project was quashed after an investigation after the first death. The board have no idea she continued."
I nodded. "I gathered as much." I closed my eyes and tried to put aside the sadness I felt about ten others before me, losing their lives for something that didn't make any sense. Why did Geminus even need super soldiers.
"I don't know what else I can help you with."
"Surely you must realize I'm 18. Fresh from the underground, the place where your daughter would've grown up."
Ben looked at me, shocked. He sat up straight and looked around, as if he expected someone to jump out from behind a tree to capture him. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you want to know about her. Have you ever thought about her?"
Ben looked at me and tilted his head. His eyes stared at me with an intensity so strong that I actually found myself feeling a little breathless. He leaned back and swallowed hard.
"You have familiar eyes." He whispered. I nodded and placed my hand on the chain around my neck. Ben nodded and looked away. "Every day. I've thought about her everyday."
My eyes filled with tears as a feeling I couldn't even begin to describe washed over me. He had wondered about me. To him I wasn't a number in a bunker. I was a person.
"Why did you survive." I whispered. "The mother was killed, but you survived and received a promotion."
"I can't answer anymore of your questions." He replied. "And I have nowhere to go. The queen will have me executed as soon as I return to Geminus."
"Why? Why would she kill you now, when she couldn't do it then." I replied, not willing to let him thwart my questions.
"I don't know you. For all I know you're playing mind games with me."
I pulled the chain from around my neck and let the ring sit in my hand. "My mother gave this to my uncle to give to me. In case he was ever lucky enough to find me."
Ben looked at the ring, and then up at me.
"My Uncle works in the castle. My Uncle is Thomas."
Ben's face drained of colour, he slid off the rock and let his hands fall into his head. "You're my child." He whispered.
"Yes." I admitted.
"I am sorry." He conceded. "I failed you. I let them take you, banish you."
I shook my head. "The backwards laws of Geminus sent me to the underground. You were helpless."
Ben shook his head. He looked up and stared through me. "You asked why she didn't kill me then."
"Yes."
"Because I knew things." He mumbled. "When I was arrested I informed her of what I knew and her fear stopped my execution. She promised to match me with your Mother, and provide a death certificate after your birth for the twin that wasn't. I believed her."
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a different life, one where I'd grown up out here, one of them... a twin.
"But she lied."
Ben nodded. "She told me she couldn't let me have everything when I'd so blatantly broken the laws of Geminus. She told me I was lucky to have my life. I was naive, I believed her."
I smiled and looked down at Ben who was still on the ground, on his knees as if he was pleading for mercy for some reason.
"Everything happens for a reason, It sounds stupid, but maybe everything had to happen this way. To end it once and for all."
"You're her minion."
I shook my head. "Only by name. By nature I am, and will always be an undergrounder. I want equality for all. I want this regime to end, I want a new world to surface. One where the government isn't run by one person who picks and chooses the laws as necessary."
Ben sat up, backing up onto the rock. He looked at me with a frown, his lips in a thin line. "You're going to fight Geminus?"
"Just her." I replied.
"Even with super strength you can't take her on alone."
"Who said anything about being alone."
"Who else is helping?"
I stopped and shook my head. I knew he wasn't happy with the queen, but his allegiance might still be with the laws of geminus, despite everything else he said.
"What stopped her from executing you 19 years ago."
"She had her children via a surrogate donor. Using her genetics of course."
"That's common knowledge." I'd known that even in the underground.
"Yes, but what isn't known is that she was already pregnant."
"Huh?"
"The queen had a natural pregnancy with her husband. She gave birth and her surrogate was induced on the same day. Her baby was born with dark hair, and the twins were born with blond. She was meant to part with her illegal child, but her emotions kicked in and she sent the boy twin to the underground instead."
My heart thumped hard. If what Ben said was true... that meant... Oliver...
"How do you know?"
"Your mother was her confidante. Her right hand lady. She delivered the boy. Then after the birth of all three children the queen had everyone memory wipedn. She had that mad scientist clear them of any knowledge that any of it had ever happened, but she didn't clear your Mother's mind, they were friends. She told me, after we discovered she was pregnant. She was sure the Queen would understand."
Oliver wasn't a twin. He was like me, born out of love despite his mother being a deplorable heartless woman. Even she had been capable of love.
"Friends?" I choked. "She had her killed and she had the same intel you did."
"I don't know why... Maybe your mother was too loyal to use it against the Queen, she was that kind of woman."
"I wish I could have known her."
"I can tell you are a lot like her." Ben smiled.
I swallowed hard, I wanted him to know that the son of the Queen, the one she couldn't give up was working with me.
"Oliver wants to end the tyranny too." I mumbled.
Ben smiled and nodded. "It's bittersweet isn't it. The child of her so called best friend, the one she had killed and her own naturally, yet illegally born son turning against the system."
"I'm not sure bittersweet is the word. Maybe sweet justice." I murmured. "We need to head back. I can't be sure how much time I have. I know somewhere safe you can go. But I need to know, are we on the same side?"
"Imogen, I failed you once, I won't fail you again."
I smiled and placed my hand over my father's. "Then Let's go."
A/N - OoooOOOooooOOOOoooo so much drama.... It means there is a twin out there. who had grown up in the underground. :O